


Bargaining

by Peanut_Butter_writes



Series: The Stages of Grief [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Gen, Sort Of, because it's in one of the alternate timelines from endgame, but i'm probably not going to write all that and if i did it wouldn't be for a while, my vision of this universe is that they save bucky and then things progress from there, stucky if you squint really hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25188136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peanut_Butter_writes/pseuds/Peanut_Butter_writes
Summary: In an alternate universe, Steve mulls over what his doppelganger said to him.Part 3 of a 5 part series where I write my way through the stages of grief over Stucky's lack of ending in Endgame. None of the fics are set in the same universe.
Series: The Stages of Grief [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1455412
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Bargaining

**Author's Note:**

> Bargaining: What if it worked out better in a different universe?

Of course Tony had thrown a party. 

He was _Tony Stark_ , self-declared “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist,” though if it were up to Steve, “egotist” might fit in there somewhere as well. 

He was Tony Stark, so of course he was going to throw a party to celebrate himself. He did assure everyone that the party was to celebrate the Avengers as a group, but that didn’t stop the public from seeing Tony as the hero who redirected a nuke and saved all their lives. No matter Tony’s intentions, this really was a “Tony (and the Avengers) saved New York” party. 

Steve didn’t like parties too much. He had been awkward in social situations. Back before the war, no girl wanted to go out dancing with a guy who was five inches shorter than her. In fact, the only times he’d gone anywhere where there was a crowd of people having a good time had been when Bucky would drag him along and saddle some poor girl up to be his date. The one redeeming factor had been alcohol. He could have a drink, loosen up, maybe try to talk the girl into dancing, though the last part rarely worked out. And now, thanks to his enhanced metabolism, Steve couldn’t even enjoy that aspect. 

In essence, the party sucked. It was no fault of Tony’s - the food was delectable, the decor was what Steve assumed was in-fashion, the guests were some of society’s most affluent and famous. It was just that Steve wasn’t made for parties, even with a more conventionally attractive body. He was out of place, and not good at socializing, and … and … 

He was thinking about _that_ again. _That_ being what had happened shortly after the Battle of New York, with his doppelganger. What _he_ \- the other Steve - had said. It was so easy to get stuck in his own head, puzzling over what had happened and what it all meant. 

“Hey. Captain. You all good?” 

Disrupting his reverie was Tony, somewhat drunk and very much in Steve’s space. Steve blinked, focusing on the room again. He was at the party, with people milling about around the grand, open room. Surely someone would see him in the corner, by himself, and wonder why he wasn’t socializing. 

“Yeah, I’m fine-” Steve started to respond, but Tony cut him off. 

“Good, because I wasn’t sure, because it _is_ a party. And you don’t seem to be partying much.” 

Steve sighed quietly and chose the most plausible of his myriad of excuses. “I can’t drink. I don’t get drunk.” Admittedly, that really wasn’t an excuse not to interact with the other guests, but hopefully Tony would fill in the rest himself. 

He did. “Shit,” he said, managing to sound both impressed and pitying. “Hey, I think Thor brought something stronger than anything we’ve got on Earth, would that work? I’ll see if I can find him…” 

Without waiting for an answer, Tony wandered off to look for Thor. Steve looked around at all the guests. He knew none of them, aside from the other Avengers, but he knew from experience that they all wanted to know him. He saw many of them eye him up, probably trying to come up with ways to broach conversation. They didn’t see him, really. There were only ever a few people who saw him. Everyone else saw Captain America, with no regard for the man under the helmet. He realized he didn’t want to converse with an endless stream of strangers who only saw him as a figure. He didn’t want to be in this room. 

Scanning around and not seeing Tony, he edged his way towards the door and slipped out into a hallway. 

The sound of his footsteps slowly grew louder than the music pumping from the party. Stark Tower - now Avengers Tower, Steve supposed - had many hallways, and many floors. Seeing a stairwell to his right, he turned and went down it, now so far away that he could almost pretend he hadn’t just broken any etiquette rule and upset a bunch of New York’s elite by his disappearance. 

At the bottom of one flight of stairs a few storeys down, he stopped and sat against a wall. It probably wasn’t very sanitary, but it was a comfortable place for him to think, alone. 

That would be, if someone hadn’t cleared their throat right then. 

Steve looked up the stairwell and his eyes met with Natasha’s. She gave him a wan smile. “Party got boring?”

Steve cleared his throat. He hadn’t thought anyone had seen him leave. “I, uh … needed some space to think.”

“Yeah?” Natasha asked, sliding down the wall opposite him to rest on the floor as well. “Want to talk about it?” 

Steve paused. Since the Battle, they hadn’t spent time together, as part of the group or one-on-one. Really, he didn’t know her very well. What he’d experienced with the _other_ Steve had been strange, but despite that he knew it was real, that it had happened. And while _he_ knew that, it might be difficult to convince someone else, especially someone who he didn’t already have a meaningful relationship with. 

But Natasha was offering to let him voice what he was thinking. They had fought by each others’ sides and came out alive. He may not really know her, but he had trusted her with his life, and he knew he would again if the situation presented itself. She wouldn’t dismiss what he would say, at least not immediately. 

His finger swept gently along the tile in a subconscious, comforting manner, picking up stray dust and crumbs. “After the battle, when we were back here in Stark’s tower, I ran into … myself.” 

“Loki?” she asked immediately. 

“At first I thought so. But now I’m not so sure. We had started fighting, and I had him and a choke hold. And then he told me,” Steve started, but then he changed his mind. Instead, he asked Natasha, “How much do you know about me?” 

“I’ve read your file,” she confirmed. “Early life, Erskine’s experiment, military records. All of it.” 

He nodded. “So you know about Bucky.” 

“Yeah. ‘Sergeant James Barnes, childhood friend of Rogers and later member of the elite combat unit named the Howling Commandos’,” she quoted, presumably from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s file on him. 

“I wouldn’t have phrased it that way,” he grinned. “Buck was more than just a childhood friend. He was there for me since I was a kid. Always looking out for me, kicking the asses of whatever guy twice my size I tried to fight, making sure my mom didn’t keep me inside all day so I wouldn’t get sick again.” 

“He sounds like a good man.” 

“He was the best.” 

“What does he have to do with what happened after New York, though?” she asked, turning the conversation back to the present. 

“Right. Well, back during the war, we were on one of our missions. We were on a train, and there was an explosion that punched a hole in the side. Bucky managed to grab on to the side of the train, but I couldn’t reach him in time.” His mouth went dry and his heart beat faster thinking about the memory. He swallowed. “He fell.” 

“I read that in your file.” There was sympathy in Natasha’s eyes, which Steve had never seen before. He suspected it wasn’t something she showed outwardly often. “I’m sorry.” 

“Thanks. The thing is, though, when I was fighting the other Steve, he said … he said that Bucky’s alive.” 

At the look of incredulity Natasha gave him, he added, “I know. It doesn’t make sense.” 

“It doesn’t,” she said. “Steve, I can see that you want to hope, but it easily could have been Loki hitting you where it hurts. He would say anything to get under your skin if he thought it would help him escape.” 

“It wasn’t Loki,” Steve pressed. “He had something of mine - a compass. I checked on it after, to see if it was missing, and it was exactly where I had left it. It hadn’t moved an inch.”

“Nothing else would make sense, though. What other explanation could there be?” she asked. 

“I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t care,” Steve confessed. “Bucky was my best friend. If there’s even a chance that he could be alive, I have to find him.” 

“That might be easier said than done,” she warned. “You don’t have any good leads to start from. The only one you do have comes from a source that isn’t reliable by any means. Not only that, but you would have a hard time convincing S.H.I.E.L.D. to help you track down a man who’s been dead for seventy years based on weak intel.” 

“We never found his body,” Steve pointed out. “My unit, we went out looking. We didn’t find him.” 

“How would he still be alive now, though?” she persisted. “There’s nothing that says he’s superhuman. Even if he could have survived the fall, surely he wouldn’t be alive now.” 

Steve was about to respond, but he stopped. Something had just clicked. 

She seemed to see something change is his expression. “What is it?”

The lab. Where he’d found him. “Schmidt wanted the formula,” he muttered. Then to Natasha, renewed excitement pulsing through his veins, “I understand now. I found Bucky at a Hydra base, in a lab. Schmidt must have had his doctors try to make the super soldier serum. They would have been using Bucky as a test subject.” He laughed. “No one on our side knew, but it must have worked. There’s no other way Bucky could have survived falling from that far up, and Hydra wouldn’t have wanted their work to go to waste, so they went out and brought him back. _That’s_ why we couldn’t find him.” There was a warm, energetic feeling in Steve’s chest, like a fire, that he hadn’t felt since … he couldn’t remember. Not since he went into the ice, at least. 

Natasha’s features were pulled together in a skeptical scowl. “That’s a lot of _what if_ s,” she cautioned. “As much as you want to believe this, it’s just a hunch. It’s a theory. There’s almost no evidence.” The warm feeling in Steve’s chest flickered. She let out a low, slow breath. “But I’ll admit, it does make some sense.” 

The fire roared back, stronger and more intense than before. _Bucky might be alive_. If he was, Steve could find him, wherever he was. He’d need a team - not S.H.I.E.L.D. though. Natasha had a point when she had said they wouldn’t be convinced. Not the Avengers - it wasn’t likely that they’d have the time to run off to satisfy a personal mission for Steve, and they all had their own lives and problems to deal with. 

Natasha seemed to be thinking the same thing, because she offered, “If you want help finding a team, there are some other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents I trust who owe me favours. I’ll contact them for you.” 

“Thank you,” Steve said, purpose filling him. _I’m getting Bucky back_. The world he lived in now didn’t seem quite as lonely with a purpose, or with the prospect of having his best friend by his side again. Natasha stood up and dusted off her dress. 

“I’m going now. If you ever need me, call,” she said with a rare, small smile. She started down the stairwell again, and left Steve with a million plans and dreams chasing each other through his mind.


End file.
